


passenger side, lighting the sky

by eelegy



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Western, Chuulip childhood friends, F/F, I would like to thank I'll Be Seeing You for my life and highly recommend everyone go read it, Mercenary Kim Lip, it's a little sad but moreso adventurey, uhhhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eelegy/pseuds/eelegy
Summary: Jungeun, a jaded mercenary, is searching for her best friend, Jiwoo, in a dystopic world of a lot of sand and very little rain. Then she's tasked with finding Son Hyejoo, the monetary reward for which could make her search for Jiwoo easy.(As advertised, it's a finding quest story. In truth, it's more than that.)
Relationships: Jo Haseul/Kim Jiwoo | Chuu, Jung Jinsol | Jinsoul/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip, Kim Jiwoo | Chuu & Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	1. somewhere far away, i can hear your call

The first thing Jungeun did when she woke up was endure blunt force trauma. "Ah, fuck!" She touched her forehead gingerly and her fingers came away wet. Blood. She cracked open her eyes to find a heavy iron frying pan next to her head on the kitchen floor and a ginger cat looking curiously down at her, seemingly not scared off by the curse. "The fuck do you want?" Jungeun peeled herself off the floor and pushed her hair out of her face to get a better look at the cat. 

The ginger cat was noticeably well-groomed, especially for around these parts, and Jungeun wondered if it had escaped from someone's house. Before she could entertain the thought further, the cat tilted its head and meowed back.

"Yeah? You think it's funny to break into someone's house and assault them? Scram." She shooed the cat, and it took off, hopping out of an open window.

"Fuck, stupid cat." She pulled a dirty dishtowel off the oven door and pressed it to the gash on her forehead. Jesus, head injuries sure did bleed a lot.

* * *

Jungeun hauled herself into her shitty car, jimmying with the wires under the wheel until the car sputtered to life, heaving as she threw it into gear, peeling out onto the road to the City. As she approached the city, the traffic thickened, as did the smog. Jungeun hated it, the way the light didn't reach the street level. Daytime was only for those wealthy enough to live up high. Or, like Jungeun, those who could brave the nomadic gangs of the Outskirts. 

Jungeun liked to pretend she lived an hour outside the city by choice. It made the commute more bearable. As it was, she pulled her beater into the massive commuter lot that she was sure was built with the best of intentions at one point. The only thing it regularly housed other than her car was an active contraband market.

Speaking of, "Heya, Lippie! Did'ja hear? Another earthquake last night! Only in the west part of the city this time." The girl calling out to her was polishing a comically large grenade launcher. Jungeun had no idea where she would have gotten her hands on something like that. Then again, a lot of things in this lot were mysteries of varying unpleasantness and definitely best left unexplored. Jungeun was glad she wasn't a cop anymore.

"Yerim. What's the casualty count?" She paused for what she hoped was a casual amount of time. "Hear about anyone important?" The actual question was implied. Yerim knew there was only one person Jungeun would call important.

"Sorry, Jungie..." Yerim's bright expression dimmed a little in apology, but it wasn't that look of pity she would have gotten from Haseul. When Haseul was still around. But that's what she loved about Yerim. With her, there was no lingering on the bad, only rolling onto the next job. Plus, she had stuck around so far. "But you know that means she's still out there. She's not-"

"Dead. I know." Jungeun shook her head. Yerim pressed her lips together and moved on to polishing the barrel. Jungeun pressed on. "Anyway, any new jobs?"

Yerim used her breath to fog up the metal and ran her cloth over it, considering. "Well, WongCorp has upped the reward to retrieve-"

Jungeun cut her off, "You know I won't do work for them." 

Yerim nodded. "That's fine! You know I'm just the messenger. Actually-" She set the launcher on her work table and rummaged around under the counter before pulling out a folder. "There's a big one. Saved it for ya. Yves' right-hand man, Olivia Hye, was spotted near the north precinct. Facial recognition finally got a scan of her face. She was born Son Hyejoo. Eighteen years old. All immediate family dead. Police want her alive." Yerim leaned in, lowering her voice, "Reward is one billion."

Jungeun exhaled slowly. "That's a lot."

Yerim nodded sagely.

Jungeun took the file and slipped it into her bag.

* * *

Jungeun had to admit she enjoyed the walk into the city. It gave her time to think. The latest murmurings were that Yves was trying to consolidate power. For what, Jungeun could only guess. She kicked a rock, observing the way dust billows up from the packed earth when the toe of her boot made contact. They were due for rain soon, apparently. Jungeun could only hope so. The last rain had been eight months ago and water prices were getting ridiculous.

As she approached the checkpoint, she rolled up her sleeves and took her travel documents out of the inner pocket of her jacket. Last time she kept her sleeves down, the guards at the gates had given her such a hard time about potential hidden shivs. She didn't have leeway for a hard time today. It had taken her months to worm her way onto info dealer Im Yeojin's good side and she'd be damned if she let a power-tripping border cop make her miss her appointment.

She stepped up to the smaller of the two cops and offered her papers. The girl couldn't have been long out of the academy by the look of what little Jungeun could see of her face under the protective mask. She ignored the curious look the girl, Officer Jeon, from a quick glance at her name tag, gave her tattoos. She spied one matching the claw on her own wrist half-hidden under Officer Jeon's watch strap, albeit much fresher. When she was in the academy, she hadn't known anyone else from her neck of the woods. She had half a mind to ask if the officer knew anything regarding a missing girl.

She stayed silent, however, unwilling to give more information than was strictly necessary. She had an appointment to get to, and Jeon handed her back her papers. "Work or pleasure?"

Jungeun took them back and carefully slid them into her inside pocket. "Work."

Officer Jeon nodded. She gestured for Jungeun's bag and Jungeun slipped it off her shoulder. The girl flipped open the flap and shuffled through the contents, pulling out the file. Jungeun suppressed a wince. Knowing Yerim, there was information in there that the cops wouldn't enjoy her having, no matter how much she had put into the force when she'd been on it.

But Officer Jeon didn't open the file, instead, she was sidetracked by the childhood photo Jungeun had with the neighborhood gang that she kept in her bag -- her one concession to her sentimental side. Officer Jeon seemed to stutter in her motions when she saw it, and when she glanced up at Jungeun and realized she'd been caught, she slid the file smoothly into the bag and handed it back over.

She pushed the button and the light above the gated entrance turned green. Jungeun ignored the way she could feel the young officer's eyes on her as she pushed her way through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of the work is from guster's satellite, and the chapter title from siames' the wolf. they sound like how this work is supposed to read, so i highly recommend checking them out. big thank you to necktie/shatterthenexus for proofing this bad boy
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/roavwade)


	2. pocket full of moonshine, countin' all the white lies

Jungeun hated the perpetual nighttime of the city. Ever since she could remember, the sky had been black and the air had been thick with exhaust from the port and factories. WongCorp owned the city and there was no one left to enforce the enviromental laws, if there even were any left. Briefly, Jungeun wondered about the earthquake the night before. Over the past ten years, the occurance of those earthquakes had increased. Jungeun was tired of hearing WongCorp’s cheery messages telling everyone that the earthquakes are no big deal. She’d lived through them as a kid. It was why her commute was so long now.

Jungeun walked down the dingy street plastered with WongCorp recruitment posters lit by the flickering lights from storefronts and the neons signs above. She ignored the men cat-calling from across the street and climbed the stairs to the monorail platform. She swiped her pass and boarded the train to Southarbor, a polite-sounding, almost tender name for a neighborhood littered with trash and chugging with the sound of power generators. The man pressed up next to Jungeun looked her over and grinned, showing his teeth and greeting Jungeun with the putrid smell of his breath. Jungeun shifted away from him and looked out the window where exhaust vents belched smoke and steam rose from manholes, shroudding the streets that flew by in a dark fog even beyond that of the smog that blotted out the sun. Jungeun barely registered anything she saw, the buidings going by too fast, until the bright WongCorp Mechanics School logo blazed into view.

She met Jiwoo at that school. It was hard to miss her, with her hands and forearms perpetually coated with grease and the bright red ribbons in her hair. Jungeun thought she was obnoxious at first, unceasingly talkative and irritatingly optimistic. But Jiwoo was charming above all else, and Jungeun couldn’t say no to a bright smile and the half sandwich that Jiwoo snuck her between classes when Jungeun had said she wasn’t hungry at lunch. Slowly but surely, Jiwoo wore away at Jungeun’s walls, convinced her that not all the students from wealthy families were vapid and weak. And Jiwoo was a genius, depite her muscly arms and broad shoulders, her best work is the most delicate. Jiwoo liked to compare it to surgery, talking about how her mother had shown her basic sutures when she was little and was training her quietly in more advanced techniques now that she was older.

Jiwoo would get a far away look in her eyes when talking about medicine and Jungeun wondered why she didn’t go into the trade. She never asked. Doing so would mean offering up her own past, and Jungeun wasn’t quite sure she even wanted Haseul knowing all the details.

WMS was long gone by the time Jungeun looked out the window again, and she was surprised to see the development where she grew up flying past her. It was a poor part of the city, not far west enough to be in the subsidized housing, but a few blocks further and she would have been. People who grew up there rarely left. Jungeun wondered how many of the neighborhood kids still lived in those same units in those buildings. Seeing the dilapidated playground between two of the buildings made her miss Haseul. She felt stupid for doing so. 

The train made a sharp left and threw Jungeun against the man, who inhaled deeply when her hair brushed his face. Jungeun held back a gag and pushed her way to the door as the train pulled to a stop.

The first thing anyone noticed about Southarbor was the noise. The murmuring of conversations between people on the street was drowned out by the chugging generators and beeping of little automated taxis, installed by WongCorp last year. She pulled out a scrap of paper with an intersection on it. The graphite chicken scratch is smudged and hard to read, but it takes her down the main drag, and then through a little sattelite of the red light district, where she politely pushed past several people offering companionship.

She spotted a small girl with a bag of chips on the corner across from a smoke shop whose cigarette display made Jungeun’s fingers itch. The girl didn't look nearly intimidating enough to be the girl she was in contact with, but when she approached her and offered up a hesitant “Yeojin?” she was rewarded with a nod and a cursory scan before Yeojin stuck her hand out for Jungeun to shake.

Yeojin took her through a convoluted maze of back streets, dodging pedestrians and carts in a way that only those who grew up doing so knew how. Jungeun kept pace.

Yeojin stopped at a door far too ornate for the greasy alley that also housed a back alley gun shop that Jungeun vaguely recognised from files on a sting operation gone wrong. It’s none of her buisness. Not her problem. She looked away, watching Yeojin pull out a keycard to unlock the door.

“Alright, you know how hard it is to get a table here, so no funny business. I’m not economic with this thing.” Yeojin brandished a taser and Jungeun had no doubt she’d use it if Jungeun stepped even a little out of line. Jungeun nodded and entered, Yeojin following closely.

The inside was a cute mix of diner furniture and ultramodern lighting, a combination that Jungeun thought shouldn’t work so well. For a place people didn't come to for the ambience, it was surprisingly slick. She sat down at the counter and looked at the blackboard on the wall.

* * *

Jungeun almost laughed out loud at the prices listed. She could imagine the reaction of a drunk stumbling into the diner for a quick knosh between bars and being hit with a hundred thousand won bill for a burger and milkshake. Nevertheless, she asked Yeojin for a grilled cheese and paid half up front as requested on the board. Yeojin took the cash and, after counting it, nodded and disappeared into the back. Within a few seconds, she could hear murmuring and then the clanking of a kitchen at work.

As she waited, Jungeun pulled the paper left on the counter toward her, The WongCorp Herald. Of course. Pretty much every other news outlet had been bought out or driven underground by them. All they seemed to cover was the gang activity both within and outside of the city, and the good news coming out of WongCorp. It was only through people like Yerim and the underground papers they sold that anyone could find out anything else.

But Jungeun needed information on the gangs, and for all of WongCorp's faults, their coverage of the Youth Crime Syndicate was accurate and up-to-date. She looked at the front page to see a grainy picture of a lanky woman from security camera footage, and next to it, an ID picture of a scowling young girl with long black hair and slumped shoulders. Under the photos, the caption read “yesterday's footage of Olivia Hye, in the top ranks of Young, now identified as Son Hyejoo, and her last government photo ID.”

Jungeun examined the photo carefully. The timestamp in the corner of the ID photo placed it as having been taken seven years before. Olivia couldn't have been older than thirteen in the picture, which made her around twenty now. Second to the crime lord at Jungeun's age. Jungeun wondered exactly how dangerous this woman was. 

Just as she was about to open the fold, a plate slid in front of her and she startled, hand automatically going to her belt for her gun, a cop instinct she hadn't fully forgotten in the year she'd been out of the force. She looked up at the person who served her, only to have her breath catch in her throat.

“Haseul.”

“Hey, Jungeun.”

Jungeun almost wished she had that gun on her. She'd never liked ghosts. 

* * *

“Well, I'm Miss Jo now. Harder to track me without a full name to go by. Plus,” Haseul smiled placidly and took a sip of her coffee, still with way too much milk. Just like Jungeun used to make fun of her for, “it's a little fun to have a code name. Makes me feel like a spy.”

Jungeun released her clenched jaw and worked it a little to relieve the stiffness. “So you just let me think you were gone? You left, Haseul. You left me. I thought.” What Jungeun thought was something she didn't even want to voice, but Haseul had to know. “I thought they got you too.”

Haseul's smile faded. “Jungeun, I wish you had seen yourself when I left. There was no one left. I'm glad to see you less of a skeleton now. You look good. Healthy.” She placed the mug on the counter, but kept her hands wrapped around it. 

“Yeah. No thanks to you.” Jungeun set her jaw and stared at Haseul. Was she really going to pretend as if she was only gone for a week?

“I'm sorry, and I'm glad to see you've gotten better.” Haseul took a sip of her coffee, still the overly sweet concoction from when they used to spend sunrises rooftopping.

The memory just makes her mad. Things weren't the same now, and Haseul wanted to pretend they were, to pretend she hadn't just left. “Fuck you.”

Haseul sighed and let go of her mug, “I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you. You obviously don’t want to have a reasonable conversation.”

“You left me and you expect me to be reasonable?” Jungeun scoffed and pushed her plate away, sandwich untouched. “You left me alone. I needed you!”

Haseul laughed and turned around to grab a rag. “You did a great job at showing it, didn’t you? Still just as pleasant as the last time we talked.” She didn't turn back around, instead wiping down the fancy coffee maker with the WongCorp logo that had been advertised everywhere a few months before. Her voice came out quieter, “You didn't let me miss her, Jungie. I missed her too.”

Jungeun wasn't quite done, though. She scoffed. “Missed. Like you're over it now. I can’t believe you. I was killing myself looking for her and you wouldnt help. Every time I brought her up, you wouldn’t talk to me. I-I needed you.”

Haseul sighed. “I was trying to help you. Obviously, a miscalculation, but-”

“Miscalculation? Am I some problem you needed to solve? Just sad little Jungie, crying over her best friend?” Jungeun laughed, surprising even herself at how hollow the sound was. “Fuck you. You were glad to be rid of both of us, I bet. Fewer problem children draging you down.”

Haseul set the rag down and gripped the edge of the counter, “Do you think I wasn’t hurting?” Jungeun recognised Haseul's flat tone from those last few months before Haseul had left. She inhaled shakily and Jungeun realized that it was all Haseul could to to smother her emotions. 

Jungeun wasn't done though. Haseul didn't understand how it had hurt. Didn't understand what Jiwoo's disappearance had done to her, and how Haseul's had shattered something she couldn't get back. “I'm sure it hurt you a lot.” Her tone was mocking and it tasted bitter coming off her tongue. “Which is why you did it to me.”

Haseul huffed out a laugh. “Jungeun, fuck. I-” She ran her hand through her hair, wetting her lips. “I was in love with her.” Haseul's voice came out raspy, and Jungeun dragged her eyes up to Haseul's face to see her blinking back tears.

Jungeun worked her jaw, tongue suddenly heavy in her mouth. All her fight was gone. Love? She tried to recall their last times together, but the details she grasped at were out of reach. All she could remember was the tinny edge to Haseul’s laugh around Jiwoo and the way Haseul would always slide away from Jiwoo to make room for Jungeun in the middle. Maybe- 

Haseul sighed and pushed herself away from the counter, blinking hard. She straightened her back and took a steadying breath before facing Jungeun, who was studying her grilled cheese, not wanting to look at Haseul. “I don’t know why I thought this could be a good talk.”

Jungeun looked up at that. “You knew who I was before I came?”

Haseul leaned back on the opposite counter, eyes still rimmed with red. “Of course I knew. It’s my business to know things now. Isn’t that why you’re here?” She looks behind Jungeun and nods, “Yeojin checks on anyone who makes an apppointment here. Anyway, you’re obviously not here on a social call and we’re clearly past the point of catching up, so let’s talk business.”

Guilt weighed down on Jungeun for a second before she pushed it down and took out her battered notebook, school emblem almost entirely worn away at this point. Half the pages were falling out and Jungeun was embarrassed at how it made her look like a mess. Haseul didn’t need to see her vulnerability. She had made that clear. “I’ve had my ear to the pulse of the gangs in the city for years. That was one of my responsibilities on the police force. There’s been no sign of Jiwoo there, and it’s clear someone else has her.” Jungeun paused, treading carefully now. Haseul wouldn’t turn her in. Jungeun trusted their relationship, as fractured as it was, but the potential for WongCorp bugs weighed on her. “People pointed me in your direction for information pertaining to, er-”

Haseul smiled flatly. “How can I trust you haven’t been recruited by them?”

A flare of white hot anger flared in Jungeun. “How dare you accuse me of working for WongCorp! After all I did to help Jiwoo, this is what you think of me?” Jungeun slid off her stool and was halfway to retrieving her back when Haseul grabbed her hand.

Haseul pressed her lips together, making a decision. “I had to make sure.” Haseul leaned back and appraised Jungeun. “I'm not the person you need.”

Jungeun snatched her hand back and grabbed her bag. “What fucking good was this then?”

“Wait.” Haseul glanced behind her and nodded. Jungeun spun around to see Yeojin bolt the door shut.

“What the fuck is this? Some kind of trap?” Jungeun reached for the pistol at her hip again by reflex.

Haseul touched her ear, her nervous tell. Jungeun was startled by the familiarity of the habit. “Just give me a second.” Then Haseul disappeared into the kitchen and Jungeun was left reeling into memories of the two of them. Before WMS, before Jiwoo. When Haseul would steal a pack of processed cheese and make them lunch in her family's unit when they both played hooky.

No sooner had Jungeun slipped into memories than Haseul was back, a woman around her age with a polite smile in tow. Haseul gestured to her, “You wanted information on WongCorp. This is Vivi, she used to work for them.”

Jungeun put down her bag and slid back into the chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from bleeker's highway
> 
> another huge, huge thank you to necktie/shatterthenexus for proofing this chapter and getting my head on straight about the direction if this story.
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/roavwade)


	3. from the rubble, what do I see?

The first thing Jungeun noticed about Vivi was her hesitance. She would glance at Haseul, who seemed to flutter around Vivi, unsure of whether to stay or go. And maybe that was right for them. Vivi would pause on a word, and Haseul would be there to supply it. Jungeun didn’t understand why. There was something strange about Vivi. It was as if she was not from the city, or even from the outskirts, yet she knew far too much about the inner workings of the city and the political nuances to not be. Jungeun was taken out of her musings when Vivi began to describe Wongcorp’s more classified work in detail.

“Wongcorp does not talk about this publicly,” Vivi started slowly, rotating the handle of her mug, but not lifting it to drink, “but they have a robotics sector.” She trailed off, looking towards Haseul, worried. Haseul nodded at her. “They do have robotics on the market for consumers, but not the ones they really care about. Those are developed on a need-to-know basis. No one has all the information about what they’re making, some don’t even know what it is, except for the project manager.”

“And you,” Jungeun added. “You seem to know a lot more than the other employees working on it.”

Vivi pressed her lips together, looking concerned. Jungeun supposed she really wasn’t supposed to know everything she did. Maybe that was why she was hiding in a dingy alley restaurant with Miss Jo. “I know,” she paused, searching for the words, “more than they meant me to.”

Jungeun searched Vivi’s face for any hints as to the meaning of that, but she got none. Vivi was completely unreadable. Jungeun wished she had that sort of poker face. “Wongcorp’s robotics sector,” she pressed, deciding not to involve herself in Vivi’s personal life more than she needed, “has something to do with Jiwoo’s disappearance?”

Vivi paused. There was something almost unsettling about the way she seemed to stop breathing while considering her answer, but Jungeun didn't have time to wonder about it. “Maybe.” She pulled a notepad out of her pocket and grabbed the lone pen from the cup next to the check pad. “There is a team within the robotics sector who specialize in surveillance. There is a woman on that team,” Vivi scribbles something, not even glancing at the paper, “with eyes everywhere. I don't know who exactly, but follow the cats.”

Jungeun blinked at the bizarre suggestion. “The...cats?”

Vivi looked up at her blankly like it was a very reasonable thing to suggest and Jungeun questioned herself for a moment. Was it a normal thing to suggest?

Jungeun narrowed her eyes. “You better not be pulling my leg. Cats?”

Vivi nodded and slid the piece of paper across the bar. “After I,” Vivi paused for a moment too long and Jungeun narrowed her eyes again. She was missing something obvious. “...left WongCorp, cats would follow me, but they were strange cats. I believe they are WongCorp's surveillance drones.”

Jungeun was incredulous. “Cats?” She frowned. “It seems so silly.” She looked down at the paper and recognized the address. “Downtown. That's in the middle of WongCorp's development.“ Jungeun never went down to those parts. People disappeared just for chewing gum. Jungeun wouldn't last an hour without a run in with a guard. “You’re sure you're not trying to get me killed?”

Vivi didn't look offended. She didn't look anything for a second, then she laughed and her face lit up, like she had gotten the joke a second late. Except Jungeun hadn't meant it as a joke. “No tricks. You have my word. Follow the cats.” Vivi put her hand on Jungeun's. There was something unsettling about the texture of her skin, but Jungeun put it down to not having human contact in too long. Maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to shrug off those women earlier.

Jungeun stretched her lips into a polite smile and extricated her hand from Vivi's to grab her wallet and retrieve the second half of the cash she needed. Vivi took it and smiled again, disappearing into the back room.

Jungeun stood up and grabbed her bag, turning to see Yeojin unlatching the door, hand resting on the trusty taser strapped to her belt. Jungeun nodded at her as she slipped out the door.

* * *

“Follow the cats.” Jungeun muttered to herself, kicking a rusted cat food tin down a dingy alley. She tried not to gag at the smell of piss lingering in the air. “What kind of fuckass-”

She cut herself off as a slender shape flitted across the alley and between two dumpsters. Jungeun narrowed her eyes and crept forward, reaching again for her hip. There among the shadows was a ginger cat, far too clean for the alley it was in. Jungeun winced as a piece of broken bottle cracked under her foot, startling the cat. It darted down the alley. Jungeun cursed and chased after it, nearly tripping on the trash bags and furniture dumped between buildings. This, Jungeun thought bitterly, was what happened when the government slashed every budget except law enforcement’s. She whipped around the corner and almost slammed into a young, wide-eyed girl as she scanned the street for the cat. She muttered a distracted apology, spotting the flick of an orange tail in the second story window of an otherwise decrepit building and narrowed her eyes. She'd have to find another way in later.

She turned around to properly apologize. Then she stopped. Upon proper appraisal of the girl, she frowned. “Are you following me?” 

The girl stepped back and put a hand on her waist, where Jungeun realized her gun was waiting. Well, shit.

Jungeun knew where she recognized her from. She was the young border guard. “You're following me.” She stepped close to the girl, schooling her face into the expression she had practiced in the mirror back in the academy.

“W-well what were you doing at Miss Jo's?” The girl stuttered and backed up.

Jungeun leaned in, pressing her finger to the girl's chest. “Why do you care? What do you have on me? You're a rookie.”

The girl, Jeon, from a quick look at the name badge half-hidden under her windbreaker, gulped. Jungeun held back a scoff. When she was in the academy, they were trained not to crack under pressure. Of course, they were also trained to break possible informants.

“This is ridiculous! I didn't come here to be harassed by some power-tripping beat cop!” Jungeun spoke up, looking around at the people passing by, most of whom didn't lift their heads, eager to be on their ways. A few did look over and Jungeun could feel Officer Jeon squirm under their gaze.

Jungeun smirked and dug her finger further into the girl's chest. The officer snapped. Before Jungeun could process what was happening, she was cuffed and shoved face-first to the damp, graffitied wall of the side street. “Can I take you somewhere a little more private?”

Jungeun didn't think she had much of a choice, but she nodded anyway. Jeon wrangled her around the corner and up the stairs of a fire escape.

* * *

Jungeun was shoved through an opening that clearly used to be a window before the panes were smashed and a tarp was nailed into the brick above the hole. She almost face-planted on the broken glass under the opening. Broken from the outside. Probably a petty burglary. She looked up to case the apartment on reflex and froze when she saw the inhabitants of the old apartment.

The flat was run-down and felt similar to the place Jungeun had grown up. Clearly, no one living here had made much, or if they had, the location of this apartment alone had wiped out their savings. The couch was worn bare and stuffing spilled out of the cushions. The refrigerator chugged loudly and the television was the old kind, not a flat screen, and the fake wood front was peeling at two corners.

And the place was swarming with cats. Jungeun stumbled forward as Officer Jeon came through the window behind her, pushing her forward and startling the nearest cats, who hissed and scattered.

“What the hell...” Jungeun trailed off. Clearly, Vivi was right about the cats. Still, Jungeun’s skin crawled as she looked at them. There was something just off about them, not quite natural.

“Don't mind the cats, Kim Jungeun.” Jeon pushed her towards the couch and Jungeun sat on the cushion not sporting the dark stain. The frame creaked as she sat. “I want you to tell me about your new job.” Officer Jeon sat on the coffee table in front of her, eyes narrowed and hand on the pommel of her nightstick. 

Jungeun adjusted her hands behind her, the cuffs chafing at her wrists. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said flatly, leaning back into her hands and trying to surreptitiously slide the handcuffs under her legs. 

Officer Jeon scowled. “I want to know what you have so far.” Jeon leaned in further and Jungeun stopped squirming. “Olivia Hye. You’re after her.”

“What the hell?” Jungeun’s eyes widened. Yerim wouldn’t have- Jungeun set her jaw and narrowed her eyes. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do.” Jeon stood up, walking around the couch towards the fridge. 

Jungeun took the opportunity to slide the handcuffs all the way under her feet and rest them in her lap, examining them. They were a new model she wasn't familiar with. A thick plastic cover protected the latch and there was no way to get a shim in. A cat hopped up onto the couch's armrest and sat, staring at her. Jungeun stared back, mouthing, “Any help?”

Jungeun heard the sound of water being poured, but couldn't turn around to see the officer. The beatings she'd taken at the academy and on patrol had left her stiff. She was relieved when Jeon returned with two glasses and no cloth in sight. “Does a one billion won reward jog your memory?” Jungeun tensed at that. Yerim... Jeon handed her a glass, unperturbed by the fact that Jungeun had half-freed herself.

“How do you know about that?” Jungeun kept as much emotion out of her voice as possible. Yerim wouldn't have sold her out, especially not to a cop. It just wasn't possible, but how did she...?

“Don’t worry, I didn’t touch Yerim. I didn’t have to. Aeongie told me about it.” Jeon took a sip of her water and cringed at the taste. “They really should clean the pipes.” She undid the top two buttons of her uniform and her cuffs, rolling up the sleeves. Jungeun studied the tiger curled around Jeon’s left forearm.

“How's the boss?” Jungeun asked, keeping her eyes on the tiger, who watched her back, teeth bared in a wild snarl. Officer Jeon looked surprised for a moment before following Jungeun's gaze.

“I...wouldn't know.” Jeon rubbed the tattoo. “I haven't been back in years.”

Jungeun leaned back, appraising the officer. “Me neither,” she said softly before steeling her voice. “Now who's...Aeongie?” She felt silly even saying the name. What kind of a code name was that?

Officer Jeon pressed her lips together. “She's an informant. The best one I have.”

Jungeun's ears caught on the use of ‘I’. “A police informant, or your personal source?”

Jeon shifted uneasily. “Well-” The jingling of keys interrupted her and she winced, clearly not pleased about the apartment's owner finding them. 

Jungeun looked over her shoulder, wishing she could also reach for her gun, just as Jeon was. Then the door swung open, revealing a tall girl in an expensive jacket with a WongCorp ID badge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from Bury Me in the Ground by Grandson


End file.
